This seems to me an awfully silly thing to get worked up about, not that anyone here is. In most languages that I know anything about (French, German, Spanish), even articles (like our a, an, the) are gender-specific. In some cultures women even have a slightly different last name from the father or the husband, should they choose to have their husband's name. (in Gaelic, it's Trina ni Dhomnaill while her brother is og Dhomnaill or O'Dhomnaill, as tranliterated on record covers; in Slavic languages females add usually "-ova" to the end of the family name). And I've never seen anyone express that these usages were insensitive. It seems to me that in America, if we are truly thoughtful and unbiased, we are always worried that we are not sensitive enough. It reminds me of Garrison Keillor's Lutherans and my own childhood Baptists just searching for ways to be more intolerant (beyond what the law would allow in the countries they fled).

Chet